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Nvidia Has an OpenClaw Strategy. Do You?

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  • Travis Kalanick Rebrands As Atoms
    • Travis Kalanick relaunched his parent company as Atoms, framing it as a stealth robotics play after years at Cloud Kitchens.
    • The site claims he’s building a “wheelbase for robots” and nearly completed acquiring Pronto, Levandowski’s mining-focused AV firm with real contracts. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec Travis Kalanick. He’s back. He’s back in autonomous vehicles, ready to take things. If you if you look at his website, he is charged up and ready. What is happening? Sean O’Kane Well, I got to give you credit because you’ve been saying this for a little while now. And this one was maybe the most the most pure example of how right you are when you keep saying it’s 2016 all over again, because here’s Travis Kalanick announcing some new thing. On Friday last week, he revealed what is sort of a new company, which he calls Atoms. I say sort of because if you’ve been paying attention to what he’s been doing since he was pushed out of Uber almost a decade ago, he has been running another tech company. It’s called Cloud Kitchens. It has a sort of parent company that was called City Storage Systems. And through that, you know, he was doing kind of this ghost kitchen stuff with Cloud Kitchens. And then he was starting to lean more and more into kind of robotics and other things that could help make Cloud Kitchens even more automated. So what Adams is, is basically taking that parent company, renaming it as Adams Inc. And and being a little bit more upfront about what it is he’s doing. He likes to position it as he’s had this company in stealth for the last like eight years, which is just not true. He certainly has been avoiding the media for for a long time and picked an interesting time, I think, for a number of reasons to reengage. But yeah, there are some lofty ideas on this website. All we know for sure is that like what’s different today other than the name as compared to like two weeks ago is he has also almost completed an acquisition of a company called pronto Yeah pronto they’re a company run by anthony levandowski who he used to work with at uber and we can get into the history there if you want and the website says that they’re also considering Some sort of acquisition in the transportation space but it doesn’t sound like he’s trying to build robo taxis or anything. He and the website (Time 0:03:43)
  • Atoms Reads Like A Catch All Vision
    • Atoms reads like a catch‑all vision that tries to cover AI, autonomous vehicles, and robotics at once.
    • Kirsten and Sean note the messaging feels like catching up to public Silicon Valley conversations rather than a focused product roadmap. Transcript: Sean O’Kane He and the website both say that they’re working on a wheelbase for robots. What does that mean in your heart of hearts, Kirsten, when you hear wheelbase for robots? What do you imagine? Kirsten Korosec All right. This is what I imagined when I read that line, which is I imagined a robot sitting on like a trolley cart and being pushed around. This is what I imagine when I hear wheelbase. Sean O’Kane Engagements he’s done since announcing this last week. I think the main takeaway here is that it does not seem like he’s keen to compete with Uber or Tesla for that matter. And we should say it’s been reported, but not confirmed that Uber has some stake in this or is backing it in some way that was reported by the New York Times a while ago, and it was sort of Reported again last week by the information. And so like we’re still waiting to learn more about that. But, you know, I would recommend anybody who’s interested in what Travis Kalanick is up to with this company to go read the website, specifically the vision tab, because it is boy, there’s A lot on here. In my view, and I think this is fair to say kind of regardless of where you’re coming from, it is someone who is trying to catch up on the conversations that have been happening in public In Silicon Valley around a lot of this stuff, AI, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and trying to have all those conversations at the same time. And, you know, it’s it’s almost kind of a good heat check on where things have stood because you kind of you (Time 0:05:32)
  • Pronto Gives Atoms A Real Business
    • Kalanick’s acquisition target Pronto was founded by Anthony Levandowski, who previously faced legal issues at Uber and was later pardoned.
    • Kirsten highlights Pronto’s real business: autonomous mining contracts, not flashy robo taxis. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec Business in here that is making money and has contracts and that’s Pronto. This is the autonomous vehicle technology company that Anthony Lewandowski founded a few years ago. And, you know, when Travis and Anthony worked together, that didn’t really work too great for a little history lesson. Anthony, along with a number of other people who are still in the industry, created auto. This was the self-driving trucks company. Uber bought it. Uber got immediately sued pretty much by Waymo for trade secret theft. And the story goes on and on. Anthony was pushed out of Uber. And around that same time, Travis also left for different reasons. So Pronto is a real company and it does have real contracts. It is focused on the mining industry. And so that part is real. And so it’s worth noting that. Anthony Ha I did want to say quickly, just as a point of order, let’s call him Levandowski. Let’s not keep calling him Anthony just for my sake. And, you know, it is striking because, you know, obviously, like Kalanick himself is a very controversial figure. They like made a whole TV miniseries about him. There’s a great reported Mike Isaac book about him and, you know, the reasons he got pushed out of Uber. Anthony Lewandowski, also like quite controversial, you know, actually with like legal consequences. And I’m curious if like in 2026, any kind of rehabilitation, you know, public rehabilitation is needed or you can just come out and just be like, hey, yep, I’m still that guy. Let’s go. Kirsten Korosec I don’t I think Anthony has been in the public eye enough that and he was actually criminally, you know, charged and sentenced in sort of related circumstances. What I talked about, he was pardoned. So he then moved on from that. And he’s always maintained certainly a fairly public. I mean, he’s not sitting there doing like interviews and stuff, but he’s been building that company for a while. (Time 0:08:08)
  • Uber Taps Rivian For RoboTaxi Fleet
    • Uber and Rivian struck a deal for RoboTaxi R2s potentially worth up to $1.25B, with an initial ~10,000 order and up to 50,000 later.
    • Rivian hasn’t yet built a production R2 and the partnership pushes autonomy R&D timelines and spending. Transcript: Sean O’Kane Does either of you want to just run it down for us? Maybe it’s not surprising in hindsight, but it definitely was a bit of a shock when we got this news yesterday, which is that Rivian is being tapped by Uber to build RoboTaxi versions Of its R2 SUV in a deal that could be worth up to $1.25 billion. There are a ton of caveats here. Maybe the biggest one that Rivian hasn’t built a production R2 yet. That’s supposed to happen in a couple of months, let alone developed or proved that it has developed a software and a mix of software and hardware that can make the R2 fully autonomous. So there’s a long way to go on Rivian’s side. And the caveats on Uber’s side, they’re only really placing an order for about 10,000 vehicles to start could go up to 50,000 they’re making a 300 million dollar investment or sort of Share purchase with Rivian to start and so you know this is unsurprising like I said in the sense that Uber is partnering with pretty much everybody except for Tesla who wants to make Some kind of autonomous vehicle right now this is a more involved partnership in some ways, like we’ve seen them do with Lucid Motors and Neuro. But, you know, Kirsten, you’ve had an eye on this stuff for a very long time. I’d be eager to hear, you know, what you think this means for kind of both of these companies. Kirsten Korosec Well, I was thinking about this last night. I think this is the first company that is partnering with Uber that is supplying the hardware, the physical car and the software, the self-driving system. And because there’s Wave, but they’re not building the car, you know. And so really, it is a true test case. And the risks are actually outsized in that they already have a lot going on. Their CEO and founder has already spun out two companies. Well, no, one was a spin out. One was just a private created company that will have some links to Rivian. They haven’t even built the factory in Georgia or haven’t completed it, which is supposed to be manufacturing the RoboTaxi version of the R2, the tick list that they have to accomplish This is quite high and they’re taking it all on. So that cannot be discounted. And I haven’t looked at the stock price today to see how much this gave them a boost. I don’t know if you can look really quickly, but you know, I’m hoping that investors take this and say, you’ve got a lot to do before you get there. I will very quickly say that they have been for years now have shifted their whole strategy around AI and how they’re developing an automated driving stack. And there’s obviously supreme confidence within the company in order to take this leap. Sean O’Kane Yeah, I mean, checking in on the stock price, they are up a little bit less than I saw earlier (Time 0:13:10)
  • Rivian Pushes Back EBITDA Target For Autonomy
    • Rivian disclosed the deal will delay its EBITDA positivity target from 2027 due to heavy investments in autonomy and partnerships.
    • Kirsten notes Rivian has spent ~$27B to date and is prioritizing long‑term AV development over near‑term profitability. Transcript: Sean O’Kane So when I took a look at the, you know, the filings with the SEC this morning, deep down in Rivian’s filing with the SEC describing this deal, they say, hey, by the way, we’ve been talking About reaching EBITDA positivity in 2027 for years now. I mean, Rivian’s lost 27 billion to date, billion since its inception. And so they had really been looking at this next year period as a moment where they would jump from just kind of like gross profit on their vehicles to at least positive EBITDA. And now they’re saying they’re not going to hit that next year because of these investments in autonomy. And we’ve heard RJ talk about how spending on R&D for autonomy is like the biggest thing that they’re doing within the company right now. (Time 0:16:41)
  • Frore Became A Unicorn By Solving Cooling
    • Frore, a chip cooling startup, became a $1.64B unicorn after pivoting from chip design to thermal systems.
    • The founders reportedly impressed Jensen Huang with a demo that led to customer and partner interest. Transcript: Anthony Ha We have one more deal to get to, and it is a chip startup that has recently become a unicorn. And Kirsten, I’ll just start with a really important question. How do you pronounce this company’s name? Kirsten Korosec For for. No, it is for, I believe, F-R Let’s say that five times real fast. Nope. This is a real. Is that your understanding that it’s for? Yes, I think I think that’s right. Sean O’Kane It’s rural juror. Kirsten Korosec Yeah, exactly. So this is a deep tech chip startup that has just become a unicorn. Their valuation is one point six four billion. But the thing that’s interesting about this is that what they started out doing isn’t what they ended up doing. And that to me is the most interesting part of this startup. So they don’t make the chips themselves. They make the cooling systems. And this apparently was inspired by a demonstration that they gave to NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Wong. Sean O’Kane This seems interesting to me because we’re just seeing so many companies. I mean, not so many, but a bunch of companies move into this space over the last year, especially, or emerge in this space where there are a lot of really interesting things happening Around. And I think for a long time, the blocker has felt like, you know, can Intel catch up with TSMC? You know, are there enough boundaries in the world? And I think there has been this kind of like real macro view of like the challenges and constraints in the chip world. And, you know, as someone who doesn’t follow that so closely, I’m really interested in kind of seeing a bunch of these companies take all these different other pieces that are like downstream Of that a bit and try to do really clever things about it. And so, you know, in that sense, like that’s why I’m interested to see where this goes. Kirsten Korosec Yeah, I think that we’re going to see a lot of these adjacent companies. And every single one of them seems to be somehow linked to Jensen Wang at NVIDIA. And GTC, the conference, is just ending, actually, as we’re recording this. (Time 0:21:17)
  • NVIDIA Projects Trillion Dollar AI Chip Market
    • At GTC Jensen Huang projected $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027 centered on Blackwell and Vera Rubin architectures.
    • NVIDIA is deepening infrastructure ties across training, robotics, and automotive to become foundational to AI stacks. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec And in true Jensen fashion, donning his leather jacket, he delivered a two and a half hour keynote and talked a lot about all the partnerships, chips. I mean, it was really kind of incredible. I’m wondering if either one of you watched this at all. Anthony Ha I didn’t watch the video, but I did read a lot of the coverage. And, you know, just first of all, as an Asian man with gray hair and a leather jacket, I think he’s doing a great job. He’s pulling it off. I think, you know, there’s a number of different things we can talk about. Maybe one place to start is that I feel like there’s the almost sort of obligatory declaring of like really like eye watering numbers that happens at these kinds of events. And that happened here. So he basically said there are sales projections of $1 trillion through 2027, which is both a really crazy number, but also actually doesn’t sound like that wild of growth in the sense That I think he said that they’ll have $ billion in sales through the end of 2026. Kirsten Korosec Right. So when we say one trillion, though, that is just in one area. So it will likely exceed that if he is accurate. And what he was talking about was demand for the AI chips, specifically the Blackwell chip, which exists and has existed for a bit. And it’s sort of like the next generation, which is the Vera Rubin chip and chip architecture. So and this was just has been talked about in the past, but it was sort of like officially launched at CES in January and it’s now in production. So to me, what’s really fascinating is that there’s clearly enough interest that the projections jumped from $500 billion through 2026 and accelerating enough that they really see It like coming up to $1 trillion. And it’s a slice of their business. I mean, it’s a big slice of their business, probably the main slice, but it’s still there will be other revenue streams coming from like their gaming division and things like that. So to me, that was really interesting. (Time 0:23:26)
  • NVIDIA’s OpenClaw Is Strategic Platform Hedging
    • NVIDIA is pushing an “OpenClaw” strategy (Nemo Claw open source) to embed itself across enterprises and reduce the risk of being sidelined.
    • The move costs little but protects NVIDIA’s position by promoting its stack and partnerships. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec Jensen loves a good partnership announcement and he did not hold back. And really, you start to see this idea of how almost entangled NVIDIA is in anything to do with AI, whether it’s training models or physical AI like autonomous vehicles, NVIDIA is really Sort of foundational to all of these companies. Sean O’Kane Yeah, I’m really interested. They’ve been doing automotive partnerships for forever, but they’re clearly working on kind of a new iteration of that, I guess you could call it, in order to not just be the sort of computer At the heart of things that’s powering these companies own sort of self-driving or driver assistance software but now they want to be like sort of more in partnership with them to to Make the cars drive themselves and you know it makes me wonder if startups like a wave in the uk or or or even like wabi or some of these other ones that are trying to be like a sort of plug and Play solution for automakers feel any heat when they see this stuff from NVIDIA I mean probably not in Wave’s case they’re working with NVIDIA in some ways you know like there are there Are definitely again he loves partnerships so there’s ways to sort of hedge against that but I do wonder like what NVIDIA’s endgame is there. Kirsten Korosec I think they want to be a part of everything. Yeah. I think they want to be a part of everything. They’re investing directly in companies and they want them to use their chip architecture. I think that’s what it is. Anthony Ha I wanted to mention he was basically saying that every company needs to have an open claw strategy now. NVIDIA is building on top of open claw. And I mean, I think that is just, you know, again, a very grand statement that’s meant to be attention grabbing. I think it’s also interesting coming at this kind of transitional moment for open claw. The founder has gone to open AI. So it’s now this like open source project that potentially can kind of flourish and evolve beyond its creator or it could languish. And so, I mean, obviously, if like companies like NVIDIA are investing a lot into it pretty seriously, then more likely that’ll continue to evolve. But I think it’ll be interesting to see, you know, a year from now, whether that looks like a prescient statement or everyone’s like open what? Kirsten Korosec Yeah, I mean, I think that in the case of NVIDIA, it costs them nothing in the grand scheme of things to launch what they call Nemo Claw, which is an open source project, which they built With the Open Claw creator. But if they don’t do something, they have a lot to lose. Jensen was like every enterprise needs to have an open clause strategy. Really, it was NVIDIA needs to have a solution or strategy for enterprises, because if it’s successful, it is another way or another pathway for NVIDIA to be part of, you know, numerous Other companies. (Time 0:25:30)
  • Olaf Demo Went Off Script And Had Mic Cut
    • Jensen demoed Olaf, a talking robot meant for Disney parks, but the mic had to be cut when Olaf started rambling live.
    • Sean and Kirsten flagged engineering and social integration pitfalls for robots in public settings like theme parks. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec Oh, yes. The Olaf robot, which, OK, Anthony, just go to the end of the two and a half hours to watch this. So the Olaf robot comes out and this is like something that Jensen loves to do he loves to have these like demos and some of them go better than others um and this was to sort of talk about It was a demo right it is also to show nvidia’s technology um in robotics and olaf was i don’t know if o was actually speaking in real time or if it was programmed. It felt a little programmed or it had specific keywords that it used. But the greatest part about it is that they had to cut its mic at the end because it just started rambling and like speaking to the crowd. And then it went over to its like little passageway and was like slowly lowered. Sean O’Kane And you could see it on the video like it was still talking but no mic now we just need to give this little robot a wheelbase and i know the perfect founder who can provide it uh yeah i mean Like these demos are always silly i don’t want to get up on my my soapbox but because i know that we we’ve talked about this a little bit earlier this week but yeah this was an impressive Demo up until the moment where it fell a little bit short. This is another really good example, though, of like robotics is a really interesting engineering problem and a really interesting physics problem and a really interesting integration Problem and all of this stuff. But, you know, this was presented as as, you know, sort of in partnership with Disney. And it’s supposed to be like the future of Disney parks and things like that like oh you’re going to be able to walk around and see Olaf from Frozen and take pictures with him and everything But like these efforts never consider or certainly don’t put front and center in events like this all the other things you have to consider when you roll stuff like out like this there’s A really good YouTuber defunct land that did a really good video about this like four hours long, not too long ago, about the history of Disney trying to get these kinds of robotics into Their park, these like automatons. And like the engineering challenges are really interesting. And it’s fun to see that history, but it always comes back to the same question of like, okay, but like what happens when a kid kicks Olaf over? Then like every other kid who sees Olaf get kicked or like knocked over has their whole trip to Disney ruined and it ruins the brand like there’s just so much on the social side of this and Like you know that sounds silly but like this is the question that we’re kind of asking about humanoid robots too there’s so much hype about all this other stuff and we just don’t really Hear as much conversation about the like really messy gray areas on the social side of these things. And and also just integrating them into people’s lives. You know, we only ever really hear about the engineering challenges, which, again, are really impressive. But I got to say that. (Time 0:28:39)
  • xAI Reboots Reflect Musk’s Churn Strategy
    • xAI has undergone repeated reboots with only two of 11 original co‑founders remaining, and Elon Musk says the company will be rebuilt.
    • Sean argues Musk’s pattern is to churn staff until he finds believers and that IPO timelines help sustain such resets. Transcript: Anthony Ha Again. This is something that’s been kind of a story that’s been developing, you know, for the past weeks and months that XAI originally had 11 co-founders, which is already kind of a wild number. And of those co-founders, only two are now left. And so there have also been these, you know, with these departures, I think Musk has been trying to say repeatedly and in different formulations, essentially like, hey, like the company Wasn’t quite working. We need to kind of revamp it, you know, redo it. And so he’s kind of said that the most explicitly now is basically saying the company wasn’t built right before. We’re building it right this time. I think maybe the most memorable comment was Casey Newton, who just posted. I’m going to bet that it’s not going to be built right this time either. Kirsten Korosec Does anyone want to take Casey up on that bet? I will agree with Casey. I’m not going to bet. I’m not going to bet against that. I’m wondering, though, what you think, how this ties into it, either one of you, how this ties into other things that are going on in like the Elon Musk eco verse right now, which is the SpaceX imminent IPO. What’s going on with Tesla? Like, is there anything that we should be reading into this reboot and how it might connect to his other existing companies? Sean O’Kane First off, I do want to point out, I don’t think this has like a real lasting effect, but it has been weird to watch. I mean, not weird, it’s Elon Musk, but like it has been kind of grating to watch him and some of the remaining people at XAI just absolutely sort of indirectly but still absolutely kind Of bad mouth the work of the people that they brought into this company over the last like year or so and essentially say what you built was was worthless and and we’re gonna start all over Again like I mean they kind of have really not minced words in so many ways but you know Musk’s sort of superpower across all his companies is the ability to churn through employees until He finds the people who believe in him the most. So like, I’m not surprised by that. I would the IPO and the merger with SpaceX that has already happened. Like, I do think this is kind of crazy. Like, this is another sort of good moment to remember how much Elon can bring people along for the ride, no matter what he does. And by people, I mean, like bankers and investors and shareholders and employees like where, you know, it for any other person to have take to started a company, a whole new company, Merged it with maybe your most valuable other company, and then talk nonstop about how you’re going to take that new combined company public. And then only then at that point say, oh, by the way, this other company that we started that we merged in is useless. We got to build it over again. (Time 0:31:52)